Cinefiles

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It's weird to think Japanese director Takashi
Miike, the madman behind Audition, Ichi the Killer and The
Happiness of the Katakuris, is bigger in America than his native
land. His melding of traditional Japanese genres, such as the Yakuza
film, with a Westernized, perverse David Lynch sensibility, is a total
mind-warp, not a viewing as much as an experience. The brutally
dream-like Gozu has a basic plot, following a young Yakuza who
must "dispose" of his crime mentor, but is presented in a totally
non-linear fashion, one bizarre sequence after another. Scenes feature
a tiny lapdog doubling as a "Yakuza attack dog," a cow-headed minotaur
at the foot of a bed, and the most unsanitary use of a soup ladle
imaginable. Hilarious, shocking and utterly visceral, this two-disc
collector's edition of Gozu is a great starting point for
budding Miike fans. — Louis Fowler

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The Cove (PG-13)

Lionsgate Home Entertainment

A band of activists led by former dolphin
trainer Richard O'Barry (who coached animals used in the 1960s TV show
Flipper) and Louie Psihoyos of the Oceanic Preservation Society
(a nature photographer making his feature debut) steal into a protected
cove in a Japanese fishing village. They are determined to capture
audio and video evidence illustrating the horror and pointlessness of
the annual slaughter of tens of thousands of dolphins. The Cove
is a documentary with balls: It doesn't merely use the narrative
structure of a heist movie to tell its tale, it appropriates the spirit
of the attractive-criminal story, too, engaging us in its aggressively
anti-authoritarian attitude. It's a confident and optimistic reminder
that those sayings about dedicated people changing the world and
unreasonable people driving progress don't just sound good; they're
true. — MaryAnn Johanson

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Frat Party: Unrated! (NR)

Anchor Bay Home Entertainment

Remember movies like Animal House, Revenge
of the Nerds or, God forbid, PCU, in which preppy asshole
frat boys were the enemy of our hapless nerdy heroes? Twenty years
later, times have changed, and now those Axe Body Spray-coated
automatons are the leading men du jour. Hopefully, the awful,
straight-to-DVD flick Frat Party will be the apex of the genre.
Randy Wayne, looking like a young Scott Stapp minus the charisma, is
the BMOC, with naked women falling at his feet. He's about to marry a
nice Italian girl with an offensively stereotyped Italian family. Can
he resist temptation? Will he make it to the wedding? Do you give a
damn? When recycled porn star Jesse Jane, a wholly horrifying
caricature of humanity, makes a gratuitous appearance, the bigger
question is, "Do men really get off to this chick? Really?"
— Louis Fowler